23 minutes. Prompts to follow when I write another flash. Friday looks busy for me, but I will write another flash
“Don’t be such a pussy.”
Harold wasn’t insulted, he couldn’t afford to be. He thought about that mysterious triangle between Janey LeBarge’s legs, and though he hadn’t exactly seen it, he had felt it blossom under the stiffness that had cursed him since reaching puberty; asserting itself in the locker room, in math class, on the bus, and, announcing itself with authority and a blush when any girl or woman looked his way or spoke to him.
Rat boy, his gang name, Johnny Latonia, had gotten Laney LeBarge in the back seat of his 442 for him as part of the initiation. This was the heartland, gangs here didn’t sell crack, didn’t make bones by killing a rival, didn’t protect against a cruel and dangerous world. It was damn near Norman Rockwell; they wore the same bomber jackets and hung out at the malt shop being rude.
“It’s coming. Don’t be such a pussy.”
Janey LeBarge. The ties, black with tar and creosote trembled under his feet. The last initiation. All Harold had to do was hang from the ties as the freight, bound for Chicago with farm equipment, military equipment, large pieces of machinery, rumbled over the trestle.
“You don’t understand …” Harold tried. He couldn’t explain it anyhow.
“I understand you’re a pussy. In a minute it won’t matter, hang from the trestle or get hit by the train.”
You don’t understand, Harold said again to himself. He kneeled to the ties, the tar was tacky and stuck to the knees of his wranglers, rat boy, Dirty Dick and Jack Knife nodded to one another and broke for rock slope on the western end, running to hit every second tie.
Harold flipped down, hyperaware of the shallow brackish water twenty feet below and feeling the rumble of the freight in his wrists, his whole body loose, letting the rumble pass through him like electricity through an ungrounded body. And there was the internal rumble. You don’t understand, Harold thought, and might have said aloud though softly, too soft to be heard over the roar of the train and the steam whistle the train let off at every trestle and cross traffic along its route.
Rat boy watched closely, honor bound as the leader of a malt shop gang to witness every initiation. Later he would not be able to explain; he didn’t understand.
The train seemed to jump the tracks at the point where Harold hung. It seemed to run right through Harold’s chest, though infinitely broader as it hit his chest, as each car and it’s cargo hit his chest, it lit a ghastly blue and was only wide enough not to breech the ribs on either side of what Rat Boy would say where Harold’s heart was. And the whole train entered, the roar swallowed by the vena cava of this slim youth hanging loosely from the ties. When the caboose finally entered all sound was swallowed completely and the chittering of nocturnal birds and the plink plink plink of dripping water.
Belly to the rocks the other three boys held their breath. From between the shoulder blades of the slim youth hanging came a silvery trout, and as it’s belly flashed, spinning in the air towards the brackish water below, the boys saw the contrast of blues and greens, letting out a collective breath like a sigh or a wave.
Harold climbed to the track above. The boys were slow to get up, to meet him on the tracks as if all the energy of youth had been sucked from them and their bones were brittle and their muscles dry.
Rat boy put his hands on Harold’s shoulders the way the leader is supposed to and gave him a name the way the leader is supposed to. His hands shook and his voice was a dry croak in this throat.
“Trout,” rat boy announced.
“Trout,” Harold repeated, and again he though ‘You don’t understand’ and again he thought how warm it was to be sheathed in Janey LeBarge.
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